April 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Heavy Metals in the Balkans and Afghanistan -- Is Iraq Next?

From Robert James Parsons, "Depleted Uranium in Bunker Bombs: America's Big Dirty Secret," Le Monde diplomatique, March 2002. See full text at http://mondediplo.com/2002/03/03uranium

"The immediate concern for medical professionals and employees of aid organisations remains the threat of extensive depleted uranium (DU) contamination in Afghanistan." This is one of the conclusions of a 130-page report "Mystery Metal Nightmare in Afghanistan?" by Dai Williams, an independent researcher and occupational psychologist. It is the result of more than a year of research into DU and its effects on those exposed to it. [See www.eoslifework.co.uk/du2012.htm]

Using Internet sites of NGOs and arms manufacturers, Williams has come up with information that he has cross-checked and compared with weapons that the Pentagon has reported--indeed boasted about--using during the war. What emerges is a startling and frightening vision of war, both in Afghanistan and in the future.

Since 1997 the US has been modifying and upgrading its missiles and guided (smart) bombs. Prototypes of these bombs were tested in the Kosovo mountains in 1999, but a far greater range has been tested in Afghanistan. The upgrade involves replacing a conventional warhead with a heavy, dense metal one. Calculating the volume and the weight of this mystery metal leads to two possible conclusions: it is either tungsten or depleted uranium.

Tungsten poses problems. Its melting point (3,422°C) makes it very hard to work; it is expensive; it is produced mostly by China; and it does not burn. DU is pyrophoric, burning on impact or if it is ignited, with a melting point of 1,132°C; it is much easier to process; and as nuclear waste, it is available free to arms manufacturers. Further, using it in a range of weapons significantly reduces the US nuclear waste storage problem.

This type of weapon can penetrate many metres of reinforced concrete or rock in seconds. It is equipped with a detonator controlled by a computer that measures the density of the material passed through and, when the warhead reaches the targeted void or a set depth, detonates the warhead, which then has an explosive and incendiary effect. The DU burns fiercely and rapidly, carbonising everything in the void, while the DU itself is transformed into a fine uranium oxide powder. Although only 30% of the DU of a 30mm penetrator round is oxidised, the DU charge of a missile oxidises 100%. Most of the dust particles produced measure less than 1.5 microns, small enough to be breathed in.

For a few researchers in this area, the controversy over the use of DU weapons during the Kosovo war got side-tracked. Instead of asking what weapons might have been used against most of the targets (underground mountain bunkers) acknowledged by NATO, discussion focused on 30mm anti-tank penetrator rounds, which NATO had admitted using but which would have been ineffective against superhardened underground installations.

However, as long as the questions focused on such anti-tank penetrators, they dealt with rounds whose maximum weight was five kilos for a 120mm round. The DU explosive charges in the guided bomb systems used in Afghanistan can weigh as much as one and a half metric tons.

Who cares?

In Geneva, where most of the aid agencies active in Afghanistan are based, Williams's report has caused varied reactions. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs have circulated it. But it does not seem to have worried agency and programme directors much. Only Médecins sans Frontiéres and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) say they fear an environmental and health catastrophe. . .

Uranium plus

The problem can be summed up as two key findings:

Radiation emitted by DU threatens the human body because, once DU dust has been inhaled, it becomes an internal radiation source; international radiation protection standards, the basis of expert claims that DU is harmless, deal only with external radiation sources.

Furthermore, uranium from reactors, recycled for use in munitions, contains additional highly toxic elements, such as plutonium, 1.6 kilogrammes of which could kill eight billion people. Rather than depleted uranium, it should be called uranium plus. . . .

These weapons represent more than just a new approach to warfare. The US rearmament programme launched during Ronald Reagan's presidency was based on the premise that the victor in future conflicts would be the side that destroyed the enemy's command and communications centres. Such centres are increasingly located in superhardened bunkers deep underground.

Hitting such sites with nuclear weapons would do the job well, but also produce radiation that even the Pentagon would have to acknowledge as fearsome, not to mention the bad public relations arising from mushroom-shaped clouds in a world aware of the dangers of nuclear war. DU warheads seem clean: they produce a fire modest in comparison with a nuclear detonation, though the incendiary effect can be just as destructive.

The information that Williams has gathered shows that after computer modelling in 1987, the US conducted the first real operational tests against Baghdad in 1991. The war in Kosovo provided further opportunity to test, on impressively hard targets, DU weapon prototypes as well as weapons already in production. Afghanistan has seen an extension and amplification of such tests. But at the Pentagon there is little transparency about this.

Williams cites several press articles in December 2001 mentioning NBC (nuclear-biological-chemical) teams in the field checking for possible contamination. Such contamination, according to the US government, would be attributed to the Taliban. But last October, Afghan doctors, citing rapid deaths from internal ailments, were accusing the coalition of using chemical and radioactive weapons. The symptoms they reported (hemorrhaging, pulmonary constriction, and vomiting) could have resulted from radiation contamination.

On 5 December, when a friendly-fire bomb hit coalition soldiers, media representatives were all immediately removed from the scene and locked up in a hangar. According to the Pentagon, the bomb was a GBU-31, carrying a BLU-109 warhead.

Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defence, on 16 January this year admitted that the US had found radiation in Afghanistan. But this, he reassured, was merely from DU warheads supposedly belonging to al-Qaeda; he did not explain how al-Qaeda could have launched them without planes. . . .

Following its assessment mission in the Balkans, UNEP set up a post-conflict assessment unit. Its director has announced that it is ready to work in Afghanistan as soon as possible, given proper security, unimpeded access to hit sites, and financing. The World Health Organization remains silent. Yet Williams urges that studies begin immediately, as victims of severe DU exposure may soon all be dead.

In Indiana, the Pentagon has closed the 200-acre proving ground where it used to test-fire DU rounds. The lowest estimate for cleaning up the site comes to $7.8 billion, not including permanent storage of the earth to a depth of six metres and of all the vegetation. Considering the cost too high, the military finally decided to give the tract to the National Park Service for a nature preserve--an offer that was promptly refused. Now there is talk of turning it into a National Sacrifice Zone and closing it forever. This gives an idea of the fate awaiting those regions of the planet where the US has used and will use depleted uranium.

--Excerpted in The Acorn, March 19, 2002, Red Oak Research, Camden, Maine <theacorn@earthlink.net>

From a letter to Peacework from Dai Williams Eos, Woking, Surrey, UK

Perhaps the people of the US would be more concerned about this proposed war if they realised the potential humanitarian disaster that may only just be starting in Afghanistan as a result of mainly US bombing.

This is only a part of the issues surrounding the risk of a war in Iraq, though a very important one. The people of Iraq already suffered the effects of 320+ tons of DU in the Gulf War. At least one of the suspected weapon systems has been combat tested in the Iraq no-fly zone. The people of Afghanistan may be suffering the early effects of 500-1000 tons of DU. The same again may be dumped on Iraq in a new bombing offensive. Large DU warhead weapons would undoubtedly be "weapons of indiscriminate effect" i.e. to use them would constitute war crimes by the US Government.

I am trying to reach out to peace and other campaign groups of conscience around the world to get the questions in the report raised. In the US they are directly relevant to Bill HR 3155 in the US Congress.

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